At the end of December, our honeymoon was finally due. We had traveled all across Bohemia for weekends away from the bustle of our new city life in Prague, but we hadn't yet had a trip where our sole focus of attention would be each other and where we could cement together our new marital bond. It was my wife's dream to go to Morocco - and also to go to see Barcelona and a flamenco show - so it was with an easy glance at flight patterns that we decided that we could do both. And to boot, we could also include a short visit with one of her best friends - the mutual friend who had original brought us together in that now defunct smokey Tbilisi bar, Amarcord, where the walls were covered with strange colorful paintings that were coated in a slightly grey nicotine ash and the tables were made from Soviet era sewing machines, which is now an apparently chic thing to do in Tbilisi bars.
After a careful study of the price variations of dates and cities, and some discussion with my wife, we had agreed that we would go to Barcelona for nights days, then fly to Tangers, travel to Chefchouan, then to Fes, spend New Years in Fes, and fly back to Barcelona for another two nights. On the first leg of the trip, we would see my wife's best friend and husband, who stay at the same hotel we would be in.
While walking along a nearly empty sidewalk, headed to the Sagrada Familia, my wife's friend Salome noted, "We all make good travel companions. It's hard to find an agreement with who you're traveling with. Sometimes a person wants to walk everywhere and see as much as possible - like us - other people just want to shop, and others want to eat and drink." As she was saying this, I was imagining sitting down for a cup of coffee and watching people out the window hurry by with their time-dependent consistency, a hobby I had formed and loved since the days of my wandering Europe with no aim or vision or schedule - possibly the freest time of my life. Salome was right, there needs to be consistency on how people travel to make a good trip. I tried best to suit my companions' needs, also wanting to see as much of Barcelona as I could, though I preferred my snails' coffee drinking, wine sipping pace.
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| A street in the Raval district |
We found our hotel with ease. There is a bus that costs 5 pounds 40 one way, or 11 pounds 20 two ways, from terminals 1 and 2 of the Barcelona airport to the city center, with stops at Placa de Espanya and Universitat, ending at Placa de Catalunya, which is the aortic heart of Barcelona, the primary arteries of Passeig de Gracia and Las Ramblas both stemming out of that plaza's ventricles. Our hotel was called Pension Miami, located in the Raval district, about a 5 minute walk from Placa de Catalunya and 2 minutes from Universitat, right behind the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art. The rooms are tiny, but with nice touches of character, like carefully carved woodwork making a kind of mantel over the otherwise Spartan bed. The room isn't much bigger than the bed, the bathroom follows suit, and the Russian couple staying next door could easily be heard with every entry and exit, and one could take pleasure in their snoring while using the toilet with the window to the bathroom's sunwell open. Our bedroom window opened to another sunwell, so we had no view of the street - which after visiting Spain with my parents earlier in the year, I discovered was a wonderful thing. The Spanish don't start their partying until around 11 and finish up at 7 in the morning, every day of the week, and since typical Spanish bars are about the size of that Pension Miami hotel room, most of the partying happens on the street.
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| In the Gothic quarter |
As soon as we arrived at the hotel, we met Salome and her husband Avto, and immediately went out for a walk through the Gothic district. The Gothic district - so-called because of the Germanic influence on the cathedrals of the area - is a tightly packed district of narrow winding corridors and tall, five story buildings. Many corridors can't fit even two or three people shoulder-to-shoulder, so that much of the area is pedestrian only by default. A walk through this large area can show you how people have been living in Europe for centuries, and because of how large the district is, more successfully than any other district in perhaps any other place on the Continent.
It was good seeing Salome again, both because she's a smart woman who's nice to talk to and because of the joy her company brings to my wife. It was a pity that we were in such a rush everywhere, with such a short time for each other and for the city, and we had to balance the time like a man might balance his illegitimate lovers - our spending time exploring the city almost felt like cheating on each other. But we take what we are given and sought to enjoy our march through those Catalonian alleyways.
First up was dinner, and while in Spain, I wasn't going to miss paella - a rice based dish of various sea creatures - which I had fallen in love with while traveling with my seafood-faring parents. This was my one culinary requirement. And we passed one restaurant serving it - indeed, as we'd later see, there are plenty of restaurants serving it - with a guy standing outside, inviting people in. We opted against it. Salome's reasoning for her negative vote, "Restaurants that need someone on the street to convince people to come in can't be good."
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| Walking along La Rambla |
In Spain though, this is the standard regime. It might be something carried on down from their Moroccan heritage, since the Arabs seem to have the same habit about getting people inside, since certainly nowhere else in Europe has this annoying habit of trying to invite people to come in - except maybe in certain, tourist heavy places. Outside of every restaurant stands a "tout", telling you about how delicious their food is, offering discounts, and often blocking your way with their menus and bodies so that you'd quit walking and come inside. Of course, for most people, this has the effect of frightening them off - like in my companions' case, and it would in my case too had I not seen the practice before.
We ended up at a restaurant on La Rambla. I'm convinced that every restaurant on La Rambla is exactly the same and with somewhat poor quality. "But there are a lot of people in them," Salome protested my rambling on La Rambla while we waited for our food.
"Here's something I especially learned in Prague," I said. "Often the most touristic restaurants are the worst. This is because of what they have to compete on. You can compete on location, atmosphere, food quality, service, and probably a few other things. Touristic restaurants are competing on location and often atmosphere. Because they have the location, they know that the thousands of tourists in Barcelona every weekend are going to see their restaurant and come inside to eat, because it's easy, and they see other people in there - other tourists like them - and assume that because other people are there, it must be a decent enough place. But then, because the restaurant knows this, they don't really have to invest on the quality of the food or necessarily the service.
"Every real estate agent will tell you that value is made from 'location, location, location', and for the lazy, uninspired restaurateur, this is absolutely true. They need the location, and the steep prices the location brings, to raise up profits, rather than a strong reputation for quality service and amazing food.
"Better then, I think, the restaurants that aren't located in the primary thoroughfares. Maybe you'll get an occasional restaurant competing on food quality in a touristic location, but then they'll easily get famous being touted on Tripadvisor or Lonely Planet, they'll up their prices or down their quality to make more money. But if you can find something just outside of super easy reach - like being on La Rambla - and preferably not having been on Lonely Planet for too long, then you'll find a restaurant that might be competing on food quality."
The food that night was plain, the paella uninspiring. And to be sure on our return path through Barcelona when we again ate at a paella place on La Rambla, I found the paella equally dull as my wife found her pizza pretty flavorless. This only confirmed my suspicions about the economics of restaurants.
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